Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

PDF

Central Washington University

Fossil Record

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Tertiary Coniferous Woods Of Western North America, George F. Beck Aug 1945

Tertiary Coniferous Woods Of Western North America, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Almost four decades have elapsed since Platen (1908), the German paleobotanist, published his report upon the fossil woods of the western United States. Since then no over-all treatment of these materials has been attempted. although Platen overlooked the Pacific Northwest with its abundance of Tertiary petrified woods. The purpose of this paper is to bring knowledge of the western coniferous woods of the Tertiary up to date. In this effort the writer recognizes that much of this information has been accumulated incidentally in the study of the Russell Petrified Forest series of central Washington, and that it is not as …


Nyssa Woods Of The Pacific-Northwest Tertiary, George F. Beck Feb 1945

Nyssa Woods Of The Pacific-Northwest Tertiary, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

The nyssa gums are one of the modern genera of trees most certainly present among the petrified woods and forests of the Pacific Northwest. Almost every collection from the mid-Tertiary of this region contains a few specimens of typical tupelo or sour gum. These are fine-grained woods which to the unaided eye may be mistaken for conifers.


Ancient Maples Of The Central Washington Region, George F. Beck Nov 1944

Ancient Maples Of The Central Washington Region, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

When I began work on the petrified logs of the general Vantage area some 13 years ago, it became apparent at once that maple-like woods are commonplace in the main (Vantage) raft forest and slightly less abundant in two rooted units of the Yakima Canyon. So widely do these woods range throughout the structural variations found in modern maples that little success has attended the efforts to assign them to nominal species. The extremes can readily be established but few hints exist as to the boundaries between them.


Two Newly Discovered Conifers, George F. Beck Apr 1944

Two Newly Discovered Conifers, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Two genera of coniferous wood, apparently not listed among the Tertiary woods of the western states, have been recognized in the Percy Train collections from Rainbow Ridge, northwestern Nevada. These two, Tsuga (hemlock) and Chamaecyparis (cedar) bring up to 14 the genera of coniferous wood more or less certainly identified from the period and area in question.


Status Of Tertiary Woods Of The Western States Representing The Juglandaceae, George F. Beck Apr 1944

Status Of Tertiary Woods Of The Western States Representing The Juglandaceae, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

For many years there has been uncertainty concerning the generic status of some fossil leaves belonging without question to the walnut family as a whole. A review of the woods of Juglandaceae as they have appeared in Tertiary horizons of the western states has suggested which genera are present, and in what proportions their leaves (or other remains) might be expected to appear.


Remarkable West American Fossil, The Blue Lake Rhino, George F. Beck Aug 1937

Remarkable West American Fossil, The Blue Lake Rhino, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Bidding for acceptance as fact, and for its place in the sun of fame and notoriety, we come now to the newly discovered fossil rhino animal mold of Blue Lake in Grand Coulee, central Washington. Not that fossil rhinos are rare or that their abundance in the Tertiary of America has waited until the present for revelation, is this fossil important. The feature in the Blue Lake rhino which taxes our credulity is the existence of the thing in what unquestionably must pass as once liquid basaltic lava. That anything organic could pass through the terrific heat and pressure of …


Formations Of The Columbia Basin, Parade Of Extinct Mammals, George F. Beck May 1937

Formations Of The Columbia Basin, Parade Of Extinct Mammals, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

In this preliminary chart are shown the extinct mammals encountered as fossils in the various formations among and above the great Columbia Basalt series of the Pacific Northwest. A few shown as appearing in the Lake Vantage horizon of the basalts.


Camels Of The Columbia Plateau, George F. Beck Mar 1937

Camels Of The Columbia Plateau, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

However foreign they may seem to us the camels are one of our oldest American stocks. Our Western plains once supported large herds of them, humped and humpless, large and small, giraffe-necked and normal-necked. For some 35 million years, from Oligocene to the Pliocene, the camels were confined to North America and it was not until recently, geologically speaking that we shared the race with the Old World.


Spruce In The Western Miocene, George F. Beck Nov 1936

Spruce In The Western Miocene, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

One of the real surprises in store for us as we began to section specimens of petrified wood from the Vantage and certain other horizons in Central Washington, was the prevalence of a spruce type hardly hinted at in the leaf lists as published for the various sediments of Yakima time (upper miocene?).


Fossil Bearing Basalts (More Particularly The Yakima Basalt Of Central Washington), George F. Beck Nov 1935

Fossil Bearing Basalts (More Particularly The Yakima Basalt Of Central Washington), George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Such an overwhelming majority of the floral and faunal remains of the earth's crust have been yielded by rocks of sedimentary origin that generalized statements concerning the occurrence of fossils often neglect their more rare appearance in metamorphic and igneous rocks. In fact there is the temptation, after volcanic tuffs have been excluded as more or less sedimentary, to venture the positive assertion that by their very character igneous rocks are incapable of recording the presence of the life which may have existed at the time of their extrusion. As a result, most that has been written concerning fossil floras …


Arrowhead Making In The Ginkgo Petrified Forest, George F. Beck Dec 1934

Arrowhead Making In The Ginkgo Petrified Forest, George F. Beck

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

In a sense we must give the Indians credit for being the original discoverers of these fossil forests of Central Washington. Not that I have been able to run down any legends or traditions regarding fossil logs or any certainty that the Indians recognized them as trees in stone. My opinion is that they could not have failed to recognize them as trees. Be that as it may, they long ago took recognition of the fact that certain logs were to be prized as the source of flint for their arrow-heads.